Aerobic Exercises Induce Antioxidant Pathways Activation in Rats

Aerobic exercises induce adaptations that improve physiological function. However, aerobic exercises, oxidative reproduction may lead to injury and other health issues such as adverse cardiac effects. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of aerobic exercises on protein expression change in the heart left ventricle to determine the advantages and disadvantages related to this mode of exercise.

Male Wistar rats were randomized into two groups; trained (T) and control (C). Animals from T group were trained for 8 weeks, and then 2D LC‑MS/MS iTRAQ method was used for extracting and analyzing the left ventricular proteins. Certain proteins that were highlighted in the special process were selected for further analysis via protein‑protein interaction network (PPI) method. The identified proteins were enriched via gene ontology (GO) to find biological terms.

We identify five overexpressed antioxidant proteins in T group compared with C group including extracellular superoxide dismutase [Cu‑Zn], Frataxin, protein kinase C delta type, STE20/SPS1‑related proline‑alanine‑rich protein kinase, and amyloid‑beta A4 protein.

Findings indicate that catalase and insulin are two exercise‑related proteins. However, they were not included in the significant differentially expressed proteins. Finally it was found that enhancement of antioxidative activity is a direct effect of aerobic exercises.